GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — In bear country, you listen for a crunch of twigs under a sharpened paw the size of a catcher’s mitt, and imagine that behind every tree lurks the swollen head and tiny eyes of the grizzly with the apt Latin name — ursus arctos horribilis.

It would be nice to daydream, to let the city stress evaporate with each step into the woods of autumn’s first week. But the Park Service has made it impossible not to fear the predator who does not fear you. There have been two deaths this year in the great mountain ecosystem that links Yellowstone and Teton parks — awful, swift, gory encounters. Another 51 instances of bruins charging people have been reported.

The Teton range, named by French-Canadian trappers for their lust, as one version has it, is impossibly showy on this day, pressed against a cerulean sky. Aspens and cottonwoods are suited for the season, wearing tentative gold. And yet, amid all this beauty, an internal mental loop prevails: what to do if the grizzly appears?
Everywhere are signs with this message: Be Bear Aware. In my search for a hike to somewhere alpine and thin-aired, park rangers are most accommodating to questions, with a persistent caveat.

“You should not hike alone without bear spray,” a ranger says. This is more imperative than suggestive. “The bears are active right now. They’ve re-colonized areas where they used to roam.” Wyoming has about 600 grizzlies. I tell her I’ve never hiked with bear spray, but the ranger is insistent.

I go to one park store, and then another, but find the shelves empty. There’s been a run on bear spray. Finally, after calling around, a clerk finds the cylinder that will provide an illusion of comfort, the last one available. When a grizzly (capable of top speeds of 30 miles an hour) charges, you are supposed to stand your ground, flip the safety from the top, point and spray. This fog made of the essence of hot cayenne peppers is apparently enough to send a 500-pound mammal back in cowering retreat. So it says.

But the bear spray is $52. Mmmmm. That seems confiscatory. But no, it’s the going rate. So, quick math: how much is a life worth? And, how stupid would I be to give it up for want of $52?

Associated Press/Laura RauchA sign warns visitors near Dubois, Wyo., that they are entering a grizzly habitat.

Mortality, the randomness of death — these things have been on my mind with news of the two deaths by bear mauling in Yellowstone, the first in that park in 25 years. And then I thought of the movie “Grizzly Man,” about Timothy Treadwell, who felt that he and the big mammals had a relationship, of sorts. At the end of one long, uncomfortably cozy season with the brown bears of Katmai National Park, Treadwell and Amie Huguenard were partially devoured by the subjects of his camera, their corpses found by a pilot.

At the trailhead, more bear warnings are posted. Don’t emit a smell. Don’t leave any food out, anytime. If you encounter a bear, try to be taller than you are (if only!). Above all — don’t run. The best thing to do is to fall on the ground, face down, and play dead.

Yes, yes, I’ve heard that advice for years. Remember the cartoon by Gary Larson, of The Far Side, showing two bears observing campers lying down? “Don’t you just love it when they play dead like that,” one bear says to another.

It’s an old trick, but it works. In a detailed report out last week on one of the Yellowstone deaths, authorities from several federal agencies said playing dead saved a person’s life. Brian Matayoshi, who had tried to run from a grizzly sow and her two cubs, was killed just five yards from where his wife lay on the ground. The bear picked up Marylyn Matayoshi by her daypack and then left her unharmed.

I force myself to think of other things — the fish in these dreamy pools, the blushing aspens, why Rick Perry thinks the earth is just a few thousand years old when the metamorphic rocks on the east face of the Teton range date to 2.5 billion years ago.

Upward, onward, heart beating, legs straining. Then, at the summit, at trail’s end, I see a silhouette of something big and black. I’m doomed. I’ve been mulling that wonderful line, attributed to a baseball pitcher, but used by Native Americans and put to good use in “The Big Lebowski”: Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

In this case, the bear is a horse, and comes with a wrangler, chewing tobacco. “See you got your bear spray,” he says.

“Yep.”

“You know, that stuff is pretty pricey. And may not even save you. A grizzly charges you, she’s gonna run right through the spray.”

“That so.”

“You’re better off using bee spray.”

“But won’t run the bear charge through that as well?”

“Probably. But the bee spray is only gonna cost you two bucks.”

On the way down, I holster the spray, and forget — at last — about the grizzlies whose home I’m walking through. You move forward with reasonable precautions, knowing you can’t control some things, and that everything worth doing involves a calculated risk. The rest is luck of the draw, the bear not getting you.

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Timothy Egan worked for The Times for 18 years – as Pacific Northwest correspondent and a national enterprise reporter. His column on American politics and life as seen from the West Coast appears here on Fridays. In 2001, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America.” He is the author of several books, including “The Worst Hard Time,” a history of the Dust Bowl, for which he won the National Book Award, “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America” and, most recently, “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis.” As of October 2013, Timothy Egan’s column can be found in a new location in the Opinion section »